


All The Years That Came After

by catty_the_spy



Category: The Village (2004)
Genre: Gen, offscreen minor character death (woman and child)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-19
Updated: 2016-02-19
Packaged: 2018-05-31 23:02:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6490810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catty_the_spy/pseuds/catty_the_spy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ten, fifteen, twenty years later. Everything is different and the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All The Years That Came After

**Author's Note:**

> recently rediscovered my love for this movie. Here’s something short that I managed to squeeze out.

 5  
“Mama …”

“Hush,” Ivy said. She had the baby on one hand and Lucius holding the other. Elizabeth and Mary, her nieces, were both crying as quietly as they could. She wondered which of the elders was shuffling over the floorboards.

And here was her son, Abram, with his voice shaking, shuffling closer to her.

“Mama.”

Lucius moved, grabbing Abram and pulling him closer, shushing him with a quiet hiss of air just as the monster’s claw scraped over their heads.

They fell asleep down there, shivering and cold.

In the morning they had a meeting, and Hannah Keller confessed to breaching the barrier. Father did not censure her; he did not need to. Fear and shame did their work.

Perhaps in time Hannah Keller would become an elder. Father had already told Ivy that she and Lucius had been chosen. When one or two elders died it would be announced, but that, Ivy prayed, was for the distant future.

At any rate, Hannah Keller would not sneak into the woods again. Not for a long, long time.

 

10

Ivy knew the creatures to be nothing but farce, to keep them from seeking out the towns, but there was a part of her that doubted. That wondered. Was it Noah or something else that attacked her in the woods? She could never be quite sure.

“This farce,” the council told Lucius, “is to keep us safe.”

“We were told that Noah was killed by those of whom we do not speak.”

“Yes.”

“Is this…also farce?”

“No.”

The farce, the elders said, was to protect them from the real danger – there were creatures in the woods, creatures much like those of whom they did not speak. Better to have the farce to protect them, to teach them how to be safe, than to let them wander the woods at will and die. Better to stay away from the towns and the creatures, and to make a good life here.

Ivy wanted to ask her father if they’d told Lucius the truth. She didn’t.

 

15  
Her youngest sister died in childbirth. The babe lasted hardly a day.

Andrew, her husband, seemed half dead himself. Ivy took charge of little Anne and her brother Paul. Her parents were willing but aged, and Kitty too heavily pregnant to have the energy. Six children would crowd her little house, but Ivy would have it no other way.

Paul had tiny spectacles that he was always losing.

“If you continue on this way I shall need to tie them to your head,” Ivy warned more than once, but at least she only hit them with her cane instead of stepping on them.

He and Anne jumped at every crack of wood at night. Anne, much like her uncle, was always worrying over the state of her frocks.

“My clothes are ever so nice,” she said, “I couldn’t bear it if they were mussed.”

They both cried every evening for their mother and begged for their father’s attention. Abram would take them home after school, and every evening he would return raging at the injustice of it all. He couldn’t bear for the little ones to suffer. Quite like his father in that way.

“I know that he loved Aunt Hope, but Mama, does he not love his children as well? Grandmother Hunt was widowed and she still lives, and she loves her children and her grandchildren and does not neglect them.”

“Perhaps if Grandmother Hunt were to talk to him…”

“I’ll ask her!” And like that Abram was thundering away, seeking out his paternal grandmother and her advice. Ivy listened to their voices – Mrs. Hunt was always so careful in her speech, and Abram always too excited. Then, following the sound of laughter, she sought out the other children.

 

18  
Ivy could not run the school alone, but Abram was a good helper. Like his grandfather he could command attention and do so gently. Like his father he formed a connection to everyone.

The students whispered to each other of the glimpses they’d caught through the trees, forgetting that Ivy could hear every word.

Ivy knew which youth lasted the longest with their backs to the woods. She knew who dared each other to dart in and out of the barrier, and she knew, for certain, that tonight her fellow council members would don the costumes and cause the bell to be wrung.

 

20  
The drill bell summoned them to their cellars and quickly, calmly, they went. Her students bunched around her but Ivy refused to run. She’d reach the nearest cellar without falling on her face.

While they waited they heard a noise – a strange roar and thud that made the ground shake. The children shrieked.

“Mrs. Hunt!” ‘What was that?” “Are they here?” “Mrs. Hunt?” “I thought we were just practicing?”

“Be still, all of you! I must be able to hear any message.”

They quieted the whimpers and whispers. The crowd of small bodies shifted, making way for Abram, who clasped first her hand and then her shoulder as he leaned in to whisper to her.

“Mother, what could that possibly have been? Have you ever known the creatures to produce such a noise?”

Ivy put her empty hand over his. “When the bell rings again I will seek out the other elders. You must return the children to their rightful places. Do not allow them to stray.”

They stayed that way, her hand over his, until the drill bell rang again.

 

25  
How was it that her father felt when Lucius came to petition the council, all those many years ago…when she came to him and begged him…?

“I request permission to go to the towns,” said Bethel Cope, her voice shaking like little Matthias Wheeler in one of his fits, “to seek medicines and supplies that are not readily available here.”

Edward Walker was too ill to meet with the other elders. It was Alice Hunt who let today’s meeting, and she seemed shocked into silence.

“I know that to do this would be dangerous, and that there is a chance the creatures would retaliate, or even block my path. Nonetheless it is my belief that if the need is great enough, the creatures will permit me to pass.”

The council broke into a flurry of anxious whispers; Ivy’s name was mentioned, and poor Noah’s.

Ivy held out her hand and Lucius took it.


End file.
